Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#191

Post by kennywinker » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 3:45 AM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #42

kennywinker wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's turns out valuations are imaginary numbers that mean nothing? I once sold a $1 beer to a friend for $2. Let's back-of-the envelope that: 100% markup, $1 profit. If I buy and sell 1 billion beers per year, that's a profit of $1B/year. Ok, so given a 5 year return on investment, that means my beer business is valued at $5 billion. Nice! Anybody interested in investing please get in touch I'm raising a series A.

Nah, you have to have explosive growth numbers with little context implying it will continue. So, cut deals to sell it at a restaurant, then a local event, and then one stadium. Numbers in individual beers will be multiplying. Clearly it will be millions or hundreds of millions of units in a year or two. So, maybe $5 billion to buy it while it's hot?

From $0 in profit to $1 in profit. $1/$0 = NaN. My growth rate is so big it breaks calculators. Make the checks out to "K. Winker"

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#192

Post by erickhill » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 4:00 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #136

tehwebguy wrote: post #49

Verizon shouldn't be allowed to own any web properties. They inject a unique subscriber identifier into your HTTP requests unless you turn it off. http://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-hea...

They own AOL and now Yahoo, so no place any users actually visit.

Yahoo.com is the 5th ranked domain in the U.S., and the world, according to Alexa. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/yahoo.com

That's pretty good.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#193

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 4:10 AM UTC

RA_Fisher wrote: post #181

dredmorbius wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard Oil. Extraction. Transport. Refining. Distribution. Sale. Seemed to result in some issues as I recall. Mixing common-carrier status with provider-of-goods is quite inherently problematic. I've got some pretty strong issues with Google's status as both search provider and other services, or with their dominant position in infrastructure, services, operating systems, applications marketplace, and on a growing…

Standard Oil may have accrued monopoly power, but at least to me it's not a foregone conclusion the company should have broken up. Yes, indeed, Rockefeller consolidated industries and bought many competitors, but he was also a master of efficiency and cost-savings. If it weren't for the break-up we might have had lower cost petroleum and as a result greater economic prosperity.

I'm of somewhat mixed minds on the question myself, though the fact that Rockefeller organised the industry for his own company's, and his own personal, benefit, gives strong pause.

As to the price of oil, I can pretty much guarantee you it would have been far lower, though also quite probably much more volatile. I've posted a few times recently on the Texas Railroad Commission and general tendencies throughout the history of oil, and other extractive industries, for either monopolies, consortia, cabals, or government controls (or some mix of the above) to form to limit extractive activity and drive prices up.

I have concerns about private appropriation of the fruits of this activity. I'm also fairly convinced that oil prices are set low by the market. By something on the order of a millionfold.

Why and what to do about that is a longer comment.

As to the particulars of Standard Oil, the company arranged for rebates, intercepted (and occasionally changed) competitor's communications, engaged in what are now entirely illegal, and were seen then as highly immoral, business practices, and much more. The industry as a whole tended to be organised around such practices, and if it weren't John D. it would likely have been someone else who'd have emerged. He played the game best and/or had some early lucky streaks.

But I really cannot support the methods he used. If power is to accrue, let it be channeled through the democratic mechanisms for managing it: government. Not privately held corporations.

Fuller expansion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12140195

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#194

Post by manigandham » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 4:17 AM UTC

droopybuns wrote: post #188

manigandham wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a new idea or theory, it's older than the internet itself. So what? This is a tired argument that doesn't really make a point. People being "the product" isn't some inherently bad thing. These platforms have so many engaged users because they do actually deliver value to those users, whether you think so or not. Maybe you want to pay for a social network but others want it free and are fine with the trade-…

Strawman. >>it not up to you to decide everyone else's fate I'm not asking anyone to live to my values. Many others share them. I think the point that users should not exceed customers is easy to understand. Many people agree with me. Many others dont. I have turned down an offer at Google because I couldn't reconcile the bad stuff. I wish more people agreed with me, but I don't say that those who don't are illogical…

> User count should not ever be exponential of customer counts.

This is what you wrote. Why make this proclamation? Why should free users be limited regardless of whether they derive value from the service and are ok with being "the product"? The ethics of a company and the value they provide to a user are all subjective and thus you cannot state that the company is unethical or the users are being exploited as a rule. This is why your statement does not make sense.

> Strawman ... I have turned down an offer at Google because I couldn't reconcile the bad stuff. I wish more people agreed with me, but I don't say that those who don't are illogical. They simply have different values. That is OK if you value diversity.

This is actually a good example of a strawman argument - and completely irrelevant to the discussion. I'm not calling you illogical and I don't see how diversity has anything to do with this. You've made a statement and I explained why it doesn't make sense (see above). You're still free to say it and I'm still glad you did as it led to this discussion.

Please focus on the arguments instead of being so defensive and using these passive accusations.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#195

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 4:18 AM UTC

ubersync wrote: post #137

Why isn't this mentioned/discussed anywhere. In 2008 Microsoft offered $45 Billion to acquire Yahoo. Then Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang rejected the offer, saying that the bid "substantially undervalues Yahoo." Microsoft raised the bid to 50 Billion, and it was yet again rejected. After that MS withdrew its bid. 8 years later, at 10% the original offer!

[deleted]

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#196

Post by dangrossman » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 4:20 AM UTC

dpark wrote: post #176

vijayp wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, YHOO's total market cap is now about $37.36B, so it's not a complete travesty. (MSFT would have gotten the Alibaba investment with the $45B offer)

Eh, it's a pretty complete travesty. 8 years later the stock is still almost 20% below the $45B offer price, which was by the way a 60% premium over the market cap at the time. I still have trouble wrapping my head around why Microsoft even made the offer, but I have even more trouble understanding why Yahoo rejected it.

In those intervening 8 years, Yahoo sold a big chunk of its BABA stock back to the company. If they kept the number of shares they had at the time Microsoft made the offer, that asset alone would be worth $48B today. If you add in the Yahoo! Japan holdings, the company would be worth at least $56B, even if the core Yahoo! business were worth nothing. It wouldn't have been a bad buy for Microsoft.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#197

Post by beagle3 » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 4:40 AM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #186

dchest wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adjusted for inflation, $8.2 billion in 2016 dollars.

Adjusted for stock returns (since it was an all stock deal), $1.3b. And that includes the huge Alibaba stake that is most of Yahoo's value, if that deal never happened and Yahoo was just what Verizon bought the total would be ~$169m. Mark was smart and bought puts to protect his stake and then sold it so that he wasn't tied to Yahoo. In retrospect he was really smart.

> Mark was smart and bought puts to protect his stake and then sold it so that he wasn't tied to Yahoo. In retrospect he was really smart.

Also questionably legal. There's this little thing called SEC Rule 144 [0], which forbids this kind of action (attempting to preempt pump-and-dump IPOs and mergers). I have no knowledge of the specific details involved, but I find it unlikely that Cuban was not subject to Rule 144 - especially since you say "bought puts to protect his stake", which indicates he couldn't sell Yahoo shares at the time, and thus was almost surely subject to said rule.

SEC enforcement was a joke (and possibly still is), but illegal actions are only ever smart in retrospect, post "statute of limitations".

[0] https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/rule144.htm

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#198

Post by cpeterso » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 4:59 AM UTC

unexistance wrote: post #179

allendoerfer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's Encrypt is Mozilla's reaction.

I'm not the most versed in encryption & stuff, so does Let's Encrypt prevents / subvert Verizon's HTTP modification? EDIT: ah it's supercookie[1] and apparently a full protection is "Only a VPN or Tor" [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh

HTTPS is adequate to protect you against X-UIDH injection, but many sites still don't support HTTPS.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#199

Post by stephengillie » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 5:42 AM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #185

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #64

I did a little work as a developer for Verizon's ecosystem back in 2007. Let me just say, from what I could see, they were a huge, bureaucratic company without a single redeeming cultural trait. The managers seemed like a bunch of frat boys who had been raised up into positions of authority through some inscrutable lottery, and none of them seemed to possess an iota of analytical capability or human management talent…

I hear similar complaints with other companies. I know at the last large company I worked for there was lots of this but also other groups who were better / different. Hard to stereotype a huge company like Verizon as one specific way of operating.

My employer feels more like 9 different companies. I feel bad for our customers who try to package multiple products, because they have to coordinate our multiple teams to work together.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#200

Post by RA_Fisher » Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 6:12 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #193

RA_Fisher wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard Oil may have accrued monopoly power, but at least to me it's not a foregone conclusion the company should have broken up. Yes, indeed, Rockefeller consolidated industries and bought many competitors, but he was also a master of efficiency and cost-savings. If it weren't for the break-up we might have had lower cost petroleum and as a result greater economic prosperity.

I'm of somewhat mixed minds on the question myself, though the fact that Rockefeller organised the industry for his own company's, and his own personal , benefit, gives strong pause. As to the price of oil, I can pretty much guarantee you it would have been far lower, though also quite probably much more volatile. I've posted a few times recently on the Texas Railroad Commission and general tendencies throughout the…

Thank you for the thoughtful comment. I believe I read that John D. bought up smaller companies because he was obsessed with the extractive commodity boom-bust cycle. His intention was to raise prices.

I'm really interested in this comment: "oil prices are set low by the market" Do you mean when externalities are included?

Re: consortia, and cabals - restricting output and raising prices will bring new entrants into the market. Eventually the cartel loses control.